Artist: Lyonel Feininger
Title: The Furious Locomotive
Description: Caricature in 'Der Liebe Augustin'
Date: 1904
Lyonel Feininger, born in New York, in 1871, of German-American parents, began
his professional career as a cartoonist. This drawing is one of three published
in a German journal in 1904, and reproduced in Ulrich Luckhardt's book about
the artist, along with this commentary:
'Although altogether only three of Feininger's drawings appeared in Der liebe Augustin this chance to freely develop his own ideas rather than those of an editor was of lasting importance to him. The second of these drawings is striking; it appeared with no accompanying text save for the title The Furious Locomotive.
There is no literary model for this work, nor is there any even remotely similar depiction in Feininger's oeuvre. A steam engine traveling over a huge viaduct has taken off and is flying through the air, trying to catch the figure of a man with its mechanical hands. The man is fleeing in horror. The dark night scene is illuminated by a huge spotlight attached to the locomotive and shaped like an eye. The beam of light illuminates the figure from above, turning it into a moving silhouette. The locomotive itself has assumed masklike features, with two headlights that are demonic eyes. Despite the falling locomotive and the figure in flight, all movement in the drawing seems frozen. The part of the stone barrier that has been knocked down is not falling but transfixed in the abyss, like the figure of the man. This is a nightmare scene, and the only similar visions are to be found in the work of Alred Kubin. The difference is that in Feininger's drawing the machine, which plays no part in Kubin's work, is a frightening creature from which man is trying to escape. The automobiles, air balloons, and airships that Feininger otherwise incorporated into his cartoons have here become a fearsome image of futuristic technology out of control. This is alien to the vision of Snapshot of Friedrichstrasse, Berlin, taken on January 14, 2000, which was drawn in 1892...'
